He had the advantage of short glides, but the volpla chief couldn't keep up with me. Sometimes trotting, sometimes walking fast, I got way ahead of him. My hard breathing arose as much out of my anxiety about the manner of handling this stranger as it did out of the exertion. I rounded a bend in the creek and there was my son sitting on the grass near a cooking fire playing with a baby volpla and talking in English to an adult volpla who stood beside him. As I approached, my son tossed the baby into the air. The tiny planes opened and the baby drifted down to his waiting hands. He said to the volpla beside him, "No, I'm sure you didn't come from the stars. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure my father--" I yelled from behind them, "What business do you have telling them that?" * * * * * The male volpla jumped about two feet. My son turned his head slowly and looked at me. Then he handed the baby to the male and stood up. "You haven't any business out here!" I was seething. He had destroyed the whole store of volpla legends with one small doubt. He brushed the grass from his trousers and straightened. The way he was looking at me, I felt my anger turning to a kind of jelly. "Dad, I killed one of these little people yesterday. I thought he was a hawk and I shot him when I was out hunting. I wouldn't have done that if you had told me about them." I couldn't look at him. I stared at the grass and my face got hot. "The chief tells me that you want them to leave the ranch soon. You think you're going to play a big joke, don't you?" I heard the chief come up behind me and stand quietly at my back. My son said softly, "I don't think it's much of a joke, Dad. I had to listen to that one crying after I hit him." There were big black trail ants moving in the grass. It seemed to me there was a ringing sound in the sky. I raised my head and looked at him. "Son, let's go back to the jeep and we can talk about it on the way home." "I'd rather walk." He sort of waved to the volpla he had been talking to and then to the chief. He jumped the creek and walked away into the oak woods. The volpla holding the baby stared at me. From somewhere far up the valley, a crow was cawing. I didn't look at the chief. I turned and brushed past him and walked back to the jeep alone. At home, I opened a bottle of beer and sat out on the terrace to wait for my son. My wife came toward the house with some cut flowers from the garden, but she didn't speak to me. She snapped the blades of the scissors as she walked. A volpla soared across the terrace and landed at my daughter's bedroom window. He was there only briefly and relaunched himself. He was followed from the window in moments by the two volplas I had left with my daughter earlier in the afternoon. I watched them with a vague unease as the three veered off to the east, climbing effortlessly.